Errands in conversation

Nothing about an errand is hard-wired into who says what. A conversation asks how things stand, says what is wanted, and offers to take it on or hand it over, and all of that is written in datapack files.

Ten kinds, added to RPG Dialogue's own conditions, values and actions, and used exactly like them.

The five states

How things stand between one player and one person. Exactly one holds at any moment.

That is what lets a conversation offer the right line without asking three questions: a choice gated on ready and one gated on running can never both be shown, so the villager either asks after the goods or waits for them, and never does both in the same breath.

Conditions

"requires": [
  { "condition": "rpg_errands:errand", "state": "ready" },
  { "condition": "rpg_errands:errand_kind", "kind": "rpg_errands:hunt" }
]

errand_kind is for the handful of lines that cannot cover all three tasks. "I have what you asked for" is right over a sack of clay and strange said having just come back from killing wolves.

errands_run is what a village's opinion of you can be written against without inventing a second reputation to hold it. Somebody who has run nine errands out of this village is a known quantity, and a line gated on at_least is how they find that out.

Values

These are what let one written line serve every errand in the pack. "%1$s %2$s, if you can spare them" is a sentence about wheat, about copper, about the wolves in the trees and about a mod's own material, none of which needed a file:

{
  "pages": [ { "translate": "mypack.asking" } ],
  "with": [
    { "value": "rpg_errands:errand_count", "capitalize": true },
    { "value": "rpg_errands:errand_item" }
  ]
}

Both counting values take the usual number style fields, so they arrive as words rather than figures. "Twenty-six", not "26". Add "digits": true for a ledger, and "capitalize": true for a number that begins a sentence.

errand_remaining is for the line given to somebody who came back short. A player carrying twenty of the twelve that were asked for is short of none of them, and a villager who announced they were owed minus eight would be doing arithmetic rather than talking.

Actions

speak_of_errand is one action rather than two on purpose. The conversation gates its choices on the state, and cannot then pair the wrong label with the wrong conversation.

hand_in_errand does everything in one place and in one order: take, pay, thank, then say so. Taking comes first and takes all or nothing, so no path through it pays out twice or pays out for a player who dropped the goods on the last page.

Writing your own

An errand names its own conversations with asking, reminding and thanking. They are ordinary dialogue files and the only thing that makes them errand conversations is the actions in them.

An asking file needs a way to say yes.

{
  "pages": [
    { "text": "The last of my ink went on a copy nobody has come to collect." },
    { "text": "Six sacs would set me right, if the squid are running." }
  ],
  "dismissible": true,
  "choices": [
    {
      "label": { "translate": "rpg_errands.choice.accept" },
      "actions": [ { "type": "rpg_errands:take_errand" } ]
    },
    { "label": { "translate": "rpg_errands.choice.decline" } }
  ]
}

A reminding file needs a way to hand it over, gated on ready, and usually a way out:

"choices": [
  {
    "label": { "translate": "rpg_errands.choice.deliver" },
    "requires": [ { "condition": "rpg_errands:errand", "state": "ready" } ],
    "actions": [ { "type": "rpg_errands:hand_in_errand" } ]
  },
  { "label": { "translate": "rpg_errands.choice.later" } },
  {
    "label": { "translate": "rpg_errands.choice.abandon" },
    "actions": [ { "type": "rpg_errands:drop_errand" } ]
  }
]

A thanking file is only words. It is opened by hand_in_errand after everything has already happened, so it must not carry one itself.

Text this mod already ships

Translation keys you can use in your own files, so the wording matches everywhere and is translated for you.